“The result of a consistent and total substitution of lies for factual truth is not that the lie will now be accepted as truth and truth be defamed as a lie, but that the sense by which we take our bearings in the real world-and the category of truth versus falsehood is among the mental means to this end-is being destroyed,” Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism. The iron refusal by those who engage in the permanent lie to acknowledge reality, no matter how transparent reality becomes, creates a collective psychosis. Those who speak in the language of truth and fact are attacked as liars, traitors and purveyors of “fake news.” They are banished from the public sphere once totalitarian elites accrue sufficient power, a power now granted to them with the revoking of net neutrality. It is perpetuated even in the face of overwhelming evidence that discredits it. The permanent lie is not circumscribed by reality. Bush did not pretend that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction once none were found. But Clinton did not continue to pretend that NAFTA was beneficial to the working class when reality proved otherwise. Bush justified the invasion of Iraq because Saddam Hussein supposedly possessed weapons of mass destruction. Clinton, when he signed into law the North American Free Trade Agreement, promised “NAFTA means jobs, American jobs and good-paying American jobs.” George W. The common political lie these politicians employed was not designed to cancel out reality. The permanent lie is different from the falsehoods and half-truths uttered by politicians such as Bill Clinton, George W. Pillage and oppression are justified by the permanent lie. The most ominous danger we face comes from the marginalization and destruction of institutions, including the courts, academia, legislative bodies, cultural organizations and the press, that once ensured that civil discourse was rooted in reality and fact, helped us distinguish lies from truth and facilitated justice.ĭonald Trump and today’s Republican Party represent the last stage in the emergence of corporate totalitarianism. It does not come from the squandering of federal dollars on a bloated military as the country collapses or the use of the systems of domestic security to criminalize dissent. It does not come from the opening of public land to the mining and fossil fuel industry, the acceleration of ecocide by demolishing environmental regulations, or the destruction of public education. It does not come from a tax bill that abandons all pretense of fiscal responsibility to enrich corporations and oligarchs and prepares the way to dismantle programs such as Social Security. The most ominous danger we face does not come from the eradication of free speech through the obliteration of net neutrality or through Google algorithms that steer people away from dissident, left-wing, progressive or anti-war sites.
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